Friday I got a reminder call from my dentist for my 7:00 AM appointment today. Normally I drive the 3 or 4 miles there but I thought why not ride my mountain bike. So about 6:35 AM I took off on my mountain bike to the dentist. I got there about 6:55 and after I locked my bike Judy the dental hygienist told me it was okay to bring the bike inside since the other offices did not open until 8:00 and I would be finished by then. It was a little warmer this morning than it has been (70 degrees versus 66 or so) but my casual pace did not heat me up too much. The view from a bike at that time of the morning is different from the car encased one I used to get when I worked. A few people were out so I greeted them as we passed. The dentist trip went well and I moved on to other things when I got back home.
About 2:00 I headed out the door for my second ride of the day, this one on my road bike. As I walked to the bike I squeezed the front and rear tires as I normally do. The front one checked out good but the rear tire felt soft. Inspecting the tire I did not find any foreign object sticking out but there was a cut. I pulled the tube out and pumped it up to find the problem. Just before I was going to quit I noticed one of the patches had a big bubble on it and then BOOM! This tube had numerous patches on it plus with this patch rupturing I decided to just replace the tube. To be save I checked the inside of the tire for any intruders but did not find anything. Then I thought I should look at the cut area. I thought it might be over the patch that exploded so I inspected the cut some more. It look like it went through the casing and the tube under pressure might extrude into it. A week or so ago I rearranged my bike stuff drawer in the garage and remembered seeing a section of an old tire I cut out for booting in situations like this. The Continental GatorSkin tire had way too much tread left to replace it so the boot went in, the tube and tire remounted and pressured up to 110 PSI. Looking at the tire cut the boot seemed to do the job so off I went on the bike ride.
All went well on the ride with my route ending up with 31.76 miles. At the start of the ride for some reason the Garmin Edge 500 did not want to record the distance correctly. While I worked on the tire it went to sleep so I woke it up when I took off. Maybe the GPS satellites still needed to lock on, I am not sure. After a 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile it started to register so I went with it. By the end of the ride the problem seemed to have left.
With the late start (2:24 PM) the weather warmed up to the heat of the day at 93 degrees. The wind did not blow much and the scattered clouds did not offer much cover from the sun. Before the ride I lathered up with sunscreen for another project I worked on and added even more before biking. Hopefully this protected me. Humidity dropped from 40% top 34% during the ride so sweat did not stay around long. When I stopped in Huffman for a break I sat on a Greensheet paper and it did not get damp from my bike shorts.
TXdot finally put up the construction barriers on FM1960 east bound lane on about half of the right lane on the causeway. I rode next to the barrier today but the next time I think I will ride the west bound shoulder to the end of the barrier and then switch to the east bound shoulder. Traffic zips by pretty fast and there is not place to get out of their way. This might cause me to not take this route as often.
Some of the ride numbers: (based on SportTracks. Garmin Connect differs some)
- 15.4 mph average speed
- 22.5 mph max speed
- 2:03:26 riding time
- 34:35 stopped time
- 574.43 miles in May
- 2510.10 miles YTD
- Breakdown for each 5 mile section
[iframe http://connect.garmin.com/activity/180748694 98% 725]
